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The Hundredth Monkey
by Ken Keyes, Jr.
The Japanese monkey, Macaca fuscata, had been observed in
the wild for a period of over 30 years.
In 1952, on the island of Koshima, scientists were providing
monkeys with sweet potatoes dropped in the sand. The monkeys
liked the taste of the raw sweet potatoes, but they found
the dirt unpleasant.
An 18-month-old female named Imo found she could solve the
problem by washing the potatoes in a nearby stream. She
taught this trick to her mother. Her playmates
also learned this new way and they taught their mothers too.
This cultural innovation was gradually picked up by various
monkeys before the eyes of the scientists.
Between 1952 and 1958 all the young monkeys learned to wash
the sandy sweet potatoes to make them more palatable.
Only the adults who imitated their children learned this
social improvement. Other adults kept eating the dirty sweet
potatoes.
Then something startling took place. In the autumn of 1958,
a certain number of Koshima monkeys were washing sweet
potatoes -- the exact number is not known.
Let us suppose that when the sun rose one morning there were
99 monkeys on Koshima Island who had learned to wash their
sweet potatoes.
Let's further suppose that later that morning, the hundredth
monkey learned to wash potatoes.
THEN IT HAPPENED!
By that evening almost everyone in the tribe was washing
sweet potatoes before eating them.
The added energy of this hundredth monkey somehow created an
ideological breakthrough!
But notice.
A most surprising thing observed by these scientists was
that the habit of washing sweet
potatoes then jumped over the sea -- Colonies of monkeys on
other islands and
the mainland troop of monkeys at Takasakiyama began washing
their sweet potatoes.
Thus, when a certain critical number achieves an awareness,
this new awareness
may be communicated from mind to mind.
Although the exact number may vary, this Hundredth Monkey
Phenomenon means
that when only a limited number of people know of a new way,
it may remain the
conscious property of these people.
But there is a point at which if only one more person
tunes-in to a new awareness,
a field is strengthened so that this awareness is picked up
by almost everyone!
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Excerpt from an article
From "In Context" Magazine
by Elaine Myers
THE STORY OF "The Hundredth Monkey" has recently become
popular in our culture as a strategy for social change.
Lyall Watson first told it in Lifetide (pp147- 148), but
its most widely known version is the opening to the book The
Hundredth Monkey, by Ken Keyes. Its central idea is that
when enough individuals in a population adopt a new idea or
behavior, there occurs an ideological breakthrough that
allows this new awareness to be communicated directly from
mind to mind without the connection of external experience
and then all individuals in the population spontaneously
adopt it. "It may be
that when enough of us hold something to be true, it becomes
true for everyone." (Watson, p148)
The concept of Jung's collective unconscious, and the
biologists' morphogenetic fields (IN CONTEXT #6} offer
parallel stories that help strengthen this strand of our
imaginations. Archetypes, patterns, or fields that are
themselves without mass or energy, could shape the
individual manifestations of mass and energy. The more
widespread these fields are, the greater their influence on
the physical level of reality." |
